I have so many people say that they will pick up their cakes from me, versus letting me deliver them and I'm not sure if its a matter of not wanting to cause me an inconvenience, but I worry about my cakes until they reach their final destination. I want them to arrive in the same condition in which I sent them away. So here are a few helpful hints on transporting a cake and storing a cake until its time to serve.
First things first, all car seats have a slope. They are higher where the thigh meets the seat and they slope downward to where your back and butt meet. The seat of the car is
NOT the place to put a cake. Although the cake is secure on the cake board, it will shift during transport. The cake feels those 80 MPH you're driving and quick brakes you have to apply, and it will move. It will not be the same cake when you open the box, if left to travel on the seat.
Holding the cake is your best bet for self transport depending on the size of the cake. No- not you personally, get a riding buddy to come along, someone responsible though, its not a job for a distracted kid, you have to keep your hands on the box. For the purpose of this blog post I'm referring to simple round cakes and sheet cakes. Wedding cakes or tiered special occasion cakes, I refuse to let a customer transport and set up. Failing a riding buddy, the back seat floor well is the best place to transport a cake. Most cars have a defined well for feet in the back seat, there is basically a wall on all 4 sides which minimizes shifting as the car is in motion. Its not going to pop out of the well and you can adjust the front seat so that it keeps the box securely in place. The floor well is flat - no slope whatsoever. Inside the car, the cake benefits from air conditioning in the summer to make sure no melting and/or slipping of decor occurs. In the winter time, I don't recommend running your heater full blast, depending upon how great the distance you must travel with a perishable item. Again the floor of the back seat is climate controlled but it doesn't feel the blowing as much as front seat passage does. You're a bit put off about the suggestion to transport on the floor? Don't be, cakes are enclosed in a box, and that box was never meant to be placed on the serving table. Its OK to put the cake box on top of a paper towel or some other barrier, although I wouldn't suggest slippery plastic, between the floor of the car and the cake box if that makes you feel some better.
I wouldn't recommend trunk travel in any season. Though the surface of the trunk in cars in flat, there is no climate control in the trunk and the area for the cake to slide around in can be one of two extremes. Either its too vast, and the cake will hit every side of the trunk on the journey, or if like me, the trunk is already full of other stuff which will create other obstacles for the cake. Maybe in the dead of winter, when there is snow on the ground, and you have a cargo net in your trunk that you can place the cake in, I might consider this a last minute, gotta get this cake there, transport option.
Moving on... (literally and figuratively). Once you get the cake to its destination, then what? Do you refrigerate the cake? Leave in on the counter in the box? Take it out of the box? What now? There are many answers, but the first one has to do with what type of icing is on the cake. All of my cakes are made from scratch, that means there are eggs, fresh fruits, milk, cream cheese, butter and other fresh items contained on or in the cake. Cakes with fondant are the biggest exception to storing in the fridge. If your cake is fondant covered, it can sit out as it hasn't been refrigerated since it received its fondant covering. Most of my cakes do require refrigeration until 1.5 hours prior to serving. If you pick up your cake the day before, it must be stored in the refrigerator, in the box to keep from absorbing fridge odors. If you pick it up at 5 for a 7pm event, go ahead and leave it out in its box until you place it where you want for serving.
What if you have leftovers, how do you store them? I hope you didn't throw away the box, it will come in handy once again. Maybe I should back up and say, NEVER cut up a cake before time. Cut slices of cake will become hard and in my opinion, inedible, by the end of the evening. But if you have a section of cake left over after the event, put that remaining section in the box and refrigerate overnight. This allows the icing to set back up and the cake to become manageable. Again, my cakes are fresh and quite moist. In the morning, after having been refrigerated in the box over night, take it out and wrap, board and all, in several layers of saran wrap. Several layers = at least 3. This will allow it to retain its moisture and because the cake is cold, the saran wrap won't adhere to the icing and remaining decor. Return to the refrigerator until you want to serve it again. Unwrap and allow it to come to a comfortable temperate before slicing the rest and enjoying.
Should I recommend freezing cakes? Well now... that's cutting in to my business :) But cakes do freeze, and if you wrap it well with saran wrap, after a night in the fridge it will be suitable for freezing. Personally, I think the cake will be so good, you won't have any left to freeze and I'll be around to bake you another one when you get a taste for another one.
Contact me: Sharon @770-314-5932 or via e-mail: akakeryatl@gmail.com
